


Define Me

by cherishiggy



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Lazy Mornings, Light-Hearted, Living Together, M/M, Slice of Life, raiden lives with the philanthropy, snake's huskies are mentioned and they have silly names, the main focus is one-sided raisune, with little bits of otasune thrown in for fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 18:24:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20710523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherishiggy/pseuds/cherishiggy
Summary: He didn't like mornings, he never did. Up until this point, they always meant more unpleasant memories would clot up his mind like thrombi would a thrombotic vein. But to those mornings, he could get used to.





	Define Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ifloveistheanswer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifloveistheanswer/gifts).

> So this fic, too, is a silly self-indulgent one, but this time I wrote such a thing for [ alyssaleandra](https://alyssaleandra.tumblr.com/), since we both have a sweet spot for Snake/Raiden! •w• I got a sudden burst of inspiration from their sketches to write something, and thus this Philanthropy + Raiden slice-of-life fic was born.
> 
> The title is from the [song of the same name by Red Vox!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoblflGmgEM) For me personally, it is about recovery and rediscovering yourself after traumatic experiences. And that's one half of what I tried to convey in this fic. The other is that shit will most certainly go down later in life, but for now, everything is okay.

  
He didn't like mornings, he never did. Up until this point, they always meant more unpleasant memories would clot up his mind like thrombi would a thrombotic vein. But to those mornings, he could get used to.

Jack ghosts his fingers over the sheets and feels the familiar warmth still clinging to the cloth. Dave must've woken up just before he did. Squinting into the streams of sunlight and watching the dust bunnies, such scaredy-cats visible only when caught in a spotlight of sun rays, Jack collects his thoughts, grounds himself into reality. Dave's side of the bed smells nice. Jack'd never been one for the scent of nicotine and musky deodorant, but this time it'd almost felt homely instead of unpleasant.

Hal'd decided to take the couch in the kitchen the night before, "yeah, Dave, no offense, but you snore like a bear in its' winter slumber." Jack had to stifle a laugh at that. He'd always been a heavy sleeper himself, so the snoring didn't bother him all that much. And besides, with Dave by his side, it is guaranteed warmth. The guy is basically a hairy transportable heater, and Jack's grateful for the fact. Plus, it means he has an excuse to scoot ever-so-slightly onto Dave's side of the bed.

He tries, to no avail, to clear the fog in his brain. God, it takes him forever to wake up.

From what he's seen so far by nomadizing with the Philanthropy, neither Dave nor Hal were morning people as well.

Dave dealt with that by doing some exercises straight on the bed and slowly moving to the floor for the side planks and push-ups so by the time he was finished, the blood was already eagerly rushing through his muscles, helping him shake off the remnants of sleep.

Hal... Hal stayed up as late as possible, so when he did get to bed by himself if Dave didn't make his ass go to sleep drag his ass away from the computer, only the wonder of nature called coffee helped the man.

And speaking of which, Jack could sense the scent of it wafting all the way from the kitchen.

Luckily, this time they had enough savings for renting an apartment with a stove, so they had the luxury to brew coffee in a cezve of their own. Dave gave Hal a grimace with eyebrows dead-set into a frown that one time he saw him drinking "the shitty brown water from the supermarket", and ever since then they had a small cezve at their disposal, able to fit exactly three portions of coffee that measured a few hearty gulps each.

Jack's body, like a prime example of a Pavlovian reflex, is already raring to go drink its' well-deserved half cup of coffee. So he slides his legs over the edge of the bed and, luckily, lands his soles straight onto the carpet, but that didn't help ward off the sudden nasty case of shivers. Figures, it should be around eight degrees Celsius outside. The autumn's really been going to town this week, with all its' chilly, muggy decadence of leaf flurries and rain.

Just where the hell is his shirt?

Quick check, more of a reflex than anything. Trusted modified Beretta M9F2, two packs of ammo - check, butterfly knife - check, backup combat knife - check. Oh, and since he's rummaging through his backpack... Protein bar - check. It and a banana he bought on yesterday's quick visit to a supermarket should suffice as a breakfast. Not that bananas were his favorite, but they were definitely up there as far as fruits go.

By the time he makes it to the kitchen, both Hal and Dave had already showered, a comfortable silence still in the air. Hal is quickly glancing between a clipboard and a laptop screen, while Dave is scratching something down in his notebook. An unexpected habit, in Jack's humble opinion, but he saw how Dave's eyes lit up when Hal gave the thing to him and pointed out the cartoony husky mugs printed on the cover, thus justifying the purchase. Each time Jack tried to inquire what's the deal is with huskies and Dave, he just got an embarrassed look from him. Perhaps he should ask Dave when he's in the mood. Jack gets a feeling that he's on the verge of discovering quite an interesting story.

Jack gets a cheerful nod from Hal and a grumbled "g'mornin'" from Dave. Both suit him just fine, so after responding suit with the same words to both and thus completing the usual morning ritual, he grabs the banana from the counter and plops down onto the couch next to Dave. An unfamiliar but welcome glow spreads in his chest.

"Sleep alright? Some asshole next door wouldn't stop their midnight soap opera marathon, I had to go have a talk with them."

Not really that awake to structure complete sentences after all, Jack takes the path of least resistance and mumbles something affirmative and just slightly coherent while he shifts to sit sideways on the couch, with his side pressed to the back of it and his legs bent over Dave's thighs. Cracking the banana open from the stem took a bit of effort, so with a huff, Jack bites into the bitter skin, wincing, and wrenches it open, then offers half of the fruit to Dave. Dave takes it with a grateful pat of a large palm on Jack's knee. His palm felt like a warm mix of a comforter and a piece of sandpaper made of callouses.

The silence envelops the room again as Dave and Jack eat their banana halves, and share the protein bar in the same way.

After the last bite of his breakfast, Jack inquires: "Did you brush your teeth with my toothbrush again, by the way?"

A throaty grumble tinted with abashment is enough indication that Jack's suspicions were correct. Hal titters from his seat. "At least two years and a couple of months since you haven't been living by yourself, and you still mix up those things. Spending time alone in Alaska sure has had its' perks for a scatterbrain like you, huh?"

"And for that, you get to do the exercises with me tomorrow, so you better get ready."

"Oh shush, you know I'm right."

"At least twenty push-ups, I'll be sure to count so you won't cheat."

Jack whips his head from one to the other when they spoke, still unsure of what to do in such situations. Those are just small friendly jabs, but he still can't quite imagine someone having a silly squabble without any aftermath with Solid Snake himself. A few years ago the situation would've made him fear for the one making jabs at the legendary soldier, but now he feels like those situations became a natural part of his life. Hal has sharp wits, and Dave's, well, Dave. Jack can't help but snicker under his breath, interrupting the bickering while still laughing: "It's okay, Dave, I don't mind. Maybe we should keep all three toothbrushes separately so it'll be easier for you to not mix them up," then adds, in a quieter tone, "I hope you'll get used to me now staying with you two. Eventually."

Dave just ruffles his hair as a sign of appreciation.

Suddenly, a tiny squeak grabs Hal's attention. He rapidly shifts in his seat away from the couch to face the laptop screen and straightens his glasses, face dark with alarm.

"Oh, hey. Would you look at that. You guys might want to see this."

While Jack is confident he could see the screen from his position if he just turned his head, Dave apparently decides he needs to take a closer look and tries to stand up. But, due to their position on the couch, each effort ends miserably as they become a tangled awkward mess of limbs. Hal side-eyes the pother with equal parts bewilderment and amusement.

After disentangling from each other, both move to stand behind Hal's chair on each side. Dave leans in over Hal's shoulder to get a better look, while Jack shuffles his weight from one leg to the other, unsure of what to do. Then, his gaze catches on to Dave's sculpted buttocks scandalously peeking out a little from under underneath his shorts, the cloth curtaining the sharp divots of muscle. Oh dear. That's... yeah. God help him. That eyeful has Jack's brain short-circuiting, his face and the ends of his ears feel uncomfortably warm for a few never-ending seconds. Dave tore his gaze from Hal's findings to see what had Jack so stumped, and, not really catching on to his flustered state, he instead thinks Jack is hesitating. So with an encouraging clap to his shoulder, Dave said: "Come on. We're in this together."

Jack wasn't really taught history, just enough to know who was their platoon's enemy. Just enough lies fed to them to make them hunger for the enemy's blood. So now he had tried to make up for being kept in the dark for most of his life, soaking up the unfolding events like a sponge. Possible causes, possible outcomes, possible motives, affiliates, corruption, names of the politicians and their rise to fame, learning all that information was like forging his own sword, after all, forewarned is forearmed. And so he had listened intently to Hal's morningly analysis of current events, intently watched the even rows of numbers, coordinates, news articles scroll by.

But this morning, the news recap was much shorter.

"Ocelot was spotted in Egypt mixing in with the protesting crowds, so my predictions that he'd turn up there sooner or later were correct." Hal pulls up a grainy photograph. Surveillance camera data? The low-res and the angle of the photo that looks like they could have been taken with one from a high vantage point, like a building, suggested as much. Just how the hell was Hal able to get it?

Dave scritches his stubble, pensive. Sniffs. Once, twice. Makes a concentrated face, examining the photo with sharp eyes. Jack can't stop the creases from forming around his eyes at that display. But, right. No getting distracted. Dave, meanwhile, reasons: "Or Liquid. We still don't know which one of them had tugged the rope to their side and is controlling the body. But at least Liquid's slightly more predictable than Ocelot, so that's a silver lining."

"Whatever it is, it can't be good. The waters have been too calm for these few months, and Liquid's - Ocelot's - ugh, whichever one of them carried out that decision - the bastard might've tried to mix in with the uprising, and where he is, even more trouble soon follows -"

Dave tightens his voice as Jack places a hand on Hal's shoulder in an attempt to calm him down, "Hey. Hal. Let's take care of the facts as they come up. Don't get ahead of yourself."

Hal sighs, rubs his eyes, his shoulders slump, easing their tensed muscles. "Yeah. You're right. I've been too high-strung as of late, with almost nothing going on..."

"That's the spirit. Drop a line to Mei Ling to see what her higher-ups' approach is going to be for that conflict, for starters. That might give us some clues."

Hal hums in response and scritches that down. His handwriting is quick and messy, full of loops and jumpy letters. Those notes are probably intended just for personal use, not as some plan of action that they each will read, so Hal didn't bother to calligraph each letter. "Okay. For now, that should be all."

A thought strikes Jack. "Any news on the possible location of Olga's child?"

"Not really," Hal taps a pen to his lips, pensive, "I have taken a sample of your blood to try and track down where the nanomachines are sending your location to, but it's quite the tedious process. Though for now, I managed to find a way to make them send the coordinates of your New York place instead, so we should still have some time to find her."  
Jack deflates slightly, feeling uneasy that he still can't help with the ordeal, be slightly more useful. But an approving nod, almost a "hey, it's gonna be okay, we'll save her" from Dave cheers him right up.

Hal, oblivious to the silent exchange behind his back, changes topics. "Since we're all here, would you mind frying some eggs for breakfast, Dave? I've got my hands full, have to run a background check on one of our other leads. And besides, my eggs always come out wrong."

A grumble. "Sure. Two with a runny yolk, right?"

With a laugh and a raise of his eyebrows, Hal replies, "Yeah! Surprised you remembered this. I'm flattered, Dave."

David just lets that one jab without any bite behind it slide in favor of taking an egg carton and a stick of butter out of the fridge. A couple of noisy seconds of rummaging through a cutlery drawer later, and he pulls out a knife.

"Kid, do ya want some, too?"

"Wouldn't mind if you fried me one, I think. I'm not that full, as it turns out."

A shrug of broad shoulders. "Sure thing."

Another clang soon follows, and Dave pulls out a frying pan. Methodically cuts off a small piece of butter and drops it on the heating pan, waits till the butter sizzles with unbridled enthusiasm. "During my stay in Alaska I've learned that fried eggs, just as any other food, are much tastier if prepared with butter instead of vegetable oil."

Jack doesn't have much to offer in the way of a reply, he didn't have experience with cooking, so he leans on the counter with his elbows instead, watching as Dave's skilled hands crack the eggs with the dull side of the knife. One, two, three, four, five. The last two, he guesses, must be for Dave himself. Some of the yolks break, creating an avant-garde swirly mess of yellow and orange in the sea of whites.

Guess the one who thought up the saying "there are three things you can watch forever: fire burning, water falling, and other people working" was right. In that moment of observance, Dave's actions were so utterly mesmerizing, Jack ended up watching him longer than he originally intended to. Having cracked all of the eggs, Dave was now fastidiously poking the air bubbles in the whites and milling black pepper on his third of the eggs. Jack is at a loss of words. He isn't sure how to describe the comfortable feeling right under his sternum, the feeling spreading, seeping through him as he takes time to slow himself down, to pay attention to the curves of the muscles rolling under Dave's tan skin, to the long healed kisses of bullets that glanced off his skin catching the morning sun.

All he can do is stand and silently watch, as to not scare away this butterfly of a fleeting moment.

But a lull in the conversation brought a recurring idea, a sudden spark of thought to Jack's mind, that much more interesting than watching Dave cook. "So. Do you, perhaps, have a soft spot for huskies, Dave?"

Dave suddenly found the action of putting the butter and eggs in the fridge that much more interesting, while Hal pipes up from his chair, "Oh, you wouldn't even imagine! He had fifty of them while he was in retirement in Alaska. Just think of all the hair on various surfaces!"

To say Jack was flabbergasted wasn't doing it justice. Even one husky was a tad too much for him, they are notorious for their boundless energy. So the thought of dealing with _fifty_ of them mortified him and made him respect Dave that much more. All he could muster out was ask, "Why so many?"

"At that point in my life, I reasonably thought dogs were better companions than humans. Maybe you call that a coping mechanism, maybe an impulse. The fluffy bastards are all cute and cuddly, despite being the more solitary dog breed," a dreamy sort of look crossed Dave's usually taut face, "wish you could've seen their happy faces when they wrestled me into the snow together, just ganged up on me. And then we piled up together in front of the heater afterward..."

Jack was speechless again, in the best possible way. Who would've thought Solid Snake loved dogs so much. That was so... _human_. It still surprised him how each and every day he's learning something new about Dave, something that is so detached from the lifeless legendary soldier image that lives on in praises, stories from the battlefield and hushed whispers.

Letting out a somewhat embarrassed cough, Dave adds after some thought: "I still don't think humans are good companions. But I don't mind you two." And busies himself with putting the eggs on two plates, then lowering the flame of the stove and covering the remaining two eggs with a lid.

Jack smiles at the revelation, hiding the fond grin in a palm on which his chin rested.

While opening the cutlery drawer to grab a fork, Jack notices the cezve. Oh. He'd almost forgotten about the purpose of his kitchen visit. Guess Dave's scatterbrainedness is rubbing off on him, huh?

They didn't have coffee filters, so a sieve would have to do, but it still let through some of the coffee grinds. Jack wrinkles his nose. He doesn't want any grinds in his coffee, thank you very much. "Hal, since you're the one with a pen in hand, could you include coffee filters in our next shopping list?"

"On it." Intense keyboard sounds ensue. Well, that works, too.

Without interrupting his story about this one time Fluff - "wait, or was it Frank? Never could tell those two apart," thinks Dave out loud - brought him a hare it killed during the walk, Dave pulls something out of the fridge. That done, he places the tiny thing on the counter next to Jack's cup of coffee, "Some cream, just the way y'like."

The simple action made Jack smile a little again and heartily thank Dave. That's what made David a reliable ally - no, friend, even. It's the little things he remembers about Jack that show he really cares underneath all the gruff demeanor.

Unintentionally listening to Dave's husky stories with only half an ear now, Jack settles on the couch again with a plateful of eggs. They were still piping-hot, so he busied himself with inspecting the ivory swirls amidst the coffee in the meantime as if they might bear all the secrets to his worries. Well, while he didn't know what awaited him in the future, at least now everything was calm and soothing. So he might as well try to stay in the moment, right?

Watching as Hal pokes fun at Dave between munching on mouthfuls of fried eggs for not finding dog saliva gross, Jack sighs to himself. Yeah, this is nice. He could get used to this.

**Author's Note:**

> Surprisingly, this fic took me much less time to write, around a week and a half compared to the previous one's half a year. Huh. Well, this was fun! Although midway through I'd realized I was writing in the past tense instead of the present one, and while fixing that nonsense, I also took it upon myself to re-check what is the appropriate use for each tense to better convey what I have in my head. Phew. Haven't had to check whether I should use present perfect or past perfect since high school, I thought I had that stuff down.
> 
> Also, here, I was thinking to have this paragraph in the fic, but I couldn't put it in without messing up the mood. of one particular part I planned to have it in. So it;s almost a blooper of sorts, lol. "It's a shimeji I set up to notify me whenever Mei Ling sends me important info leaks!" Getting two confused looks in response, Hal expressively gestured with his hands to try and better illustrate his point, "It's a desktop helper. Say you trained a dog to bring you newspaper in the morning. This little thing is pretty much the same if you program it the right way!"
> 
> I wasn't sure and still am not about the way I've portrayed Raiden in this one. He should be more... snappy and snarky, while here he's more mellow and thoughtful? But eh. Same as always, it's up to you readers to determine whether my portrayal was successful.
> 
> Pssst. If you like Raisune, check out [ alyssaleandra's tumblr!](https://alyssaleandra.tumblr.com/)! They've got lots of cute stuff and a cute art style to boot~
> 
> And ye, if you want to, hmu at [ cherishiggy](https://cherishiggy.tumblr.com/) to talk about whatever.


End file.
